Is Lady Gaga’s ‘ARTPOP’ a Flop?

Lady Gaga released ‘ARTPOP’ on Nov. 11 to mixed reviews (which she doesn’t care about) and amid a lot of traffic, including that from her labelmate Eminem, who sold nearly 800,000 copies of ‘The Marshall Mathers LP2.’ The sales projections for ‘ARTPOP’ are in and they are not what you think. Is ‘ARTPOP’ a flop and therefore ‘ARTFLOP?’

The good news is that the album is on track to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200. However, it is set to underperform in relation to original sales forecasts. It will cross the first week finish line with lower-than-expected numbers.

Bean counters had initially predicted that the album would sell north of 300k and possibly move 350k copies. But it looks as though ‘ARTPOP’ will sell in the range of 260k, according to this report. That’s the opposite of Em, who sold more than forecasted. But then again, he’s been doing this a lot longer.

The Gaga prediction would mark a massive drop from 2011′s chart-topping ‘Born This Way,’ which sold over a million copies in its first week, due in part to an online promotion that offered the album at the deep discount of 99 cents for two days. That contributed to almost half of the sales.

Even without the dirt-cheap promotion, this still marks quite a dip for ‘ARTPOP.’

However, another piece of good news is that the album will sell in the same range as Katy Perry’s ‘Prism’ and Miley Cyrus‘ ‘Bangerz,’ and achieve the same chart position, which should shut down the Gaga vs. Katy vs. Miley fiction writers.

Overall, ‘ARTPOP’ falls in line with its peers, just not with its predecessor, both last week (Eminem) and last time (‘Born This Way.’)

We won’t know the final tallies until late next Tuesday (Nov. 19). And it’s too early to judge the album as a flop or not. While it hasn’t been a critical darling, its status in Gaga’s catalog will be determined over time.

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